Catalogue Entry
Johnson’s paintings of women are often his best portraits, exhibiting a range of techniques and emphasizing their intelligent faces even when enwrapped in sumptuous fabrics, such as we see in Edwina Booth. —PH
MacGibeny, 2021: Scott Nielsen, a Johnson family relative by marriage, wrote in an email that in this portrait Newton was "Likely sitting in a chair, likely wearing the type of bonnet popular among women of that age at that time, and we now know that she was holding her knitting." However, a handwritten note on papers from the Douglas County Historical Society says that earlier descendant Louis Dolby Newton must have been mistaken in saying that she was portrayed with her knitting. The basis for that note is unknown.
Harriet Walbridge Newton (1800–1878). Wife of Henry Newton. Mother of William, John, James, Mary, and Martha, most of whom were portrayed by Johnson.
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